The collaboration of artists and poets is of course not new, but the show celebrates a unique New York moment when publications were small, and the cross fertilization of artistic energy gave rise to The New York School of Poetry, the beat and other literary movements. Commerce, though not ignored, was not at the forefront of art. But that of course was pre-Warhol.

Artist George Condo has some literary cred: he collaborated with Burroughs and Ginsberg, and coming from Lowell, Massachusetts, the working class milieu that spawned Jack Kerouac, he wrote a spirited intro for Kerouac's “Book of Sketches.”

George Condo, the artist as Warholian “superstar,” is affirmed at the New Museum's survey of his career, “Mental States,” where Condo posing with Kanye West and Marc Jacobs at the shows' opening, signifying a synergy of arts and marketplace. Just look at those portraits in the show's main gallery on the 4th floor, hung in important frames, the Guston/ Crumb/ Picasso/ Looney Tune inspired, pod heads juxtaposed with abstract riffs on Old Masters oils. Artist Judy Hudson observed, “Here we are at Disney World again.” The whole enterprise is a subversive riff on art history, including the gnarly bronze busts titled “Dionysus,” “The Old Sea Hag,” “Perseus,” “Tristessa,” etc.

Down what feels like a secret staircase to the 3rd floor where smaller spaces house works of various themes, LeeLee Sobieski and others crammed into the largest gallery focused on abstract work. You can say, Condo mines the collaborative; his imagination is keyed in with music, and with celebrity. Especially the notorious. One room themed, “Manic Society” features finely wrought paintings of a toothy screaming priest, of sex on a striped couch; the figures form a two-headed beast both bizarre and frightening. This unforgettable picture is called “The Return of Client No. 9.”

January 24, 2011

With Oscar nominations close at hand, Frank Rich's New York Times column on the values illustrated in two top movies, True Grit and The Social Network hit home, affirming America's premier art form. Rich's discourse on the unexpected success of the Coen Brothers' western in the time of Facebook suggests another film: The Fighter. This beautifully wrought film is on every critic's select list, but the debate for Oscars centers on The Social Network and The King's Speech, each taking the lead for many awards. Last week's retrospective of David O. Russell's career at The Museum of the Moving Image had me thinking of a new category: Movie with the Biggest Heart. The Fighter may vie with Toy Story 3, but in the end would topple all contenders.

First, the real-life location of Lowell, Massachusetts, a red brick urban center with distinct ethnic enclaves, is the perfect breeding ground for the Great American Story. The director has a real feel for such places, having worked for a time in Lewiston, Maine. Then, the performances: at center is Mark Wahlberg in the role of Micky Ward, praised as masterful and understated. Around him swirl some outsized characters, Golden Globe winners Melissa Leo as Alice Ward and Christian Bale as Dicky, over the top as the real life personae are. (By the way, look out for Leo in the upcoming HBO movie, Mildred Pierce.) And when Letterman asked Dustin Hoffman what performance he thought stood out this year, the “Huckabees” veteran picked Amy Adams in this movie, the “MTV girl” and only woman whose hair was not teased out of the frame.

At a luncheon at 21 last week celebrating the director's career, you could see where this movie with heart gets its soul. David O. Russell worked the room focusing on each guest: hosts Spike Jonze and Geoffrey Fletcher, director John Cameron Mitchell, and other movie insiders and well-wishers. Russell said he had never eaten in the legendary restaurant before. When Jeannie Berlin came to say hello, Russell sang her praises for a movie that meant so much to him as a teen, what else? The Heartbreak Kid. The 1972 one. And so it went.

Later that night in Astoria, reported Russell: the kick off to the retrospective week was “particularly great” with about 300 people showing up. Spike Jonze, conducting the Q&A, was “very gracious in his subversive way.” When Russell offered him a cinnamon Altoid, the box got passed around the audience too: “It was very real and alive.” Rosie Perez was there, as was Jonze's mom Sandy who said “the nicest things about me that almost made me cry.”

I'm told that the Academy voters are unpredictable. So maybe those seeking movies that reflect “another America” -in Frank Rich's words-- can consider the one that's here. Maybe this is the year of The Fighter that could.

January 20, 2011

The idea for Alex Gibney's new film Magic Trip began at Sundance and climaxes with a world premiere at the film festival this weekend.

En route to Sundance to show Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Gibney and editor Alison Ellwood, found a New Yorker article by Robert Stone that piqued their interest: Ken Kesey, the celebrated author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest who died in 2001, left behind an unfinished film. They quickly acquired the rights, and found that completing Kesey's vision was its own arduous trip. Said Gibney in a recent interview: “Showing this at Sundance is coming home again.”

Magic Trip poses a question: When did the '60's start? Everyone thinks it was all tie dye and flowers but really it was Donna Reed shirtwaists and winged gas-guzzlers in suburban driveways, idyllic America from the decade before. That is, until everything changed in 1963, the year of conflicting images: the Kennedy assassination and the coming World's Fair, catalyst for Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters' 1964 LSD fueled road trip in a hand painted school bus dubbed Further.

Yes, the Pranksters and their iconic Further were famously immortalized in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, but less known are the 40 hours of 16mm footage the prankster's took consciously following an unscripted script that featured themselves as characters: Kesey was Swashbuckler, Ken Babbs was Intrepid Traveler, George Walker was Hardly Visible, Steve Lambrecht was Zonker, and others. The women were bold, one pregnant: Gretchen Fetchin, Stark Naked. Trucks refused to pass when she perched panty-clad on the bus's rear.

The driver Neal Cassady was Speed Limit. But in this movie the beat icon shakes off the myths about him, seeming paternal. Gibney points out, taking a fatherly precaution, Cassady checks Further's tires before taking the trip west. The footage of Neal Cassady is particularly rare, emphasizing his tragedy: after On the Road, he was cast into a role he was not prepared to play. And, glimpsed at a party in New York, slumped in a chair, the writer Jack Kerouac seems out of it, definitely on his down journey.

Finding this footage badly damaged, cut up and scratched, and inexpert to say the least, Gibney, with the help of the History Channel and Martin Scorsese's film preservation foundation, worked his own magic transforming the material, restoring audio and visuals, even hiring a lip reader to help sync sound to make “an immersion experience” of that remarkable trip. “We were like archaeologists working carefully and delicately,” he said.

A high moment (pun intended) is a fully realized acid trip. Said Gibney: “We did not want a stylized LSD trip, or a cartoon. We wanted to come out of the material that was there.” Research into Kesey's romance with LSD revealed the irony the great counter culture drug originated in experiments by the CIA, not to liberate, but to enslave, to be used for interrogation, even torture.

Guided by those who were there, Gibney began with conventional interviews: “but they seemed like a film we had already seen extolling 'the halcyon days of yesteryear.'” Then his team found transcripts of audiotapes John Teton made with the Pranksters and put those together with film. The effect is kaleidoscopic, voices at times difficult to identify over pictures reflect the larger Prankster mindset.

“The Pranksters had a saying, 'You're either on the bus or off the bus.' We decided to make a film to give the feeling of being on the bus literally and figuratively.”

Said Gibney of his choices: “The big break for us was another Kesey book, The Further Inquiry. He wrote it like a live court case and screenplay for what they wanted to make:

“The pranksters had a vision of the film but I don't think they ever realized it. As filmmakers they were wildly enthusiastic and captured great images. But there were huge technical problems: being good farm boys they bought the best equipment, the best cameras, recorders. They didn't think they needed to hire a cameraman. In some of the footage, a soundman is seen with wires in his mouth. They were running the audiotapes off the generator on the bus and so they ran tape recordings at wildly different speeds. Alison Ellwood who co-directed and edited with me went through all the footage. She never found a sync point.”

As to the music: “We heard some songs on the recordings and found better recordings. We used their vibe to guide us. We included John Coltrane tunes and used his son Ravi, done in the spirit of Coltrane.We used music of 1964 or before, “The Wanderer,” for example. Once they get back from the trip we use Dead music-they were then known as “The Warlocks,” that's The Dead before they were The Dead-- then later, “Truckin,” later Dead.

Magic Trip is an event. While the trend for filmmakers tackling the challenge of mid-twentieth century culture is to create fiction-i.e., the recent movie Howl, the upcoming On the Road, good as these works may be, they are representations. This, said Gibney, “is the real deal,” not a documentary per se, “I call it archival cinema verite.”

January 18, 2011

America Ferrera huddled in a back booth at B. Smith restaurant chatting with her pal, Gilmore Girl Alexis Bledel, the occasion: the 500th performance of the off-Broadway gem, Love Loss and What I Wore, by Nora and Delia Ephron based on a book by Ilene Beckerman aka Gingy. Nearby sat Nikki Blonsky, Judy Gold, Anita Gillette, Pauletta Washington (who I'd first met at last spring's Fences opening night with her husband Denzel); the fine actresses in the new ensemble held court at tables crowded with celebrants, including Ferrera's fiancé Ryan Piers Williams and Gilmore grandma actress Kelly Bishop. I have seen the play 3 times but that does not qualify me as a regular, Gingy says. Like Gingy and the Ephron sisters, enthusiasts come every time the cast changes, every month. Some regulars caravan it, Jodi Schoenbrun Carter, the Westside Theatre's associate general manager tells me: “We know them by name.” So, this play is more than just a stellar theater event, it's a haven, and a happening. Ferrera, a veteran Love, Loss performer, soon to be seen in episodes of The Good Wife, would return, the Ugly Betty star says, if she can clear a month out of her schedule.

Because the work is resonant for all things girlie, especially wardrobe, it is easy for audiences to remember that special dress they cherished, that hideous hat they hated and were forced to wear by protective moms. Nikki Blonsky said she had a dress that she lost 65 pounds to wear; now her clothes are custom made. The Hairspray film star in her stage debut now wants to play, if she could only grow taller and older, Mary Poppins. Are there any producers in the house?

Meantime downtown at the Soho Playhouse production of Charles Busch's comedy, The Divine Sister, Charles Busch as Mother Superior at St. Veronica's convent is eh, no Mary Poppins. Rolling her triple lashed eyes heavenward at the shenanigans of nuns on a mission, foundlings reunited with parents, mistaken identities, lost love, guilt and sin, sin, sin, Charles Busch is his most delicious baring leg in a trim '40's pencil skirt. Joining him in this hilarious romp is an A-team ensemble of the ridiculous, Julie Halston, Alison Fraser, Amy Rutberg, Jennifer Van Dyck, and Jonathan Walker. Is there nothing left sacred?

And there's a lot of Internet potty mouth going on at the Triad cabaret theater on 72nd Street in You've Got Hate Mail, a comedy by Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore. Five actors sit at computers ferociously composing email. Van Zandt is Richard, husband of Stephanie (Jane Milmore), cheating with Wanda (Fran Solgan), conspiring with George (Glenn Jones), and despising Peg (Barbara Bonilla). Get it? Well, you may think you do but behind this very funny theater piece lurk many surprises. Moral: Beware what you post.

January 12, 2011

You expect an awards event to be a love fest with presenters presenting in exalted tones and awardees waxing benighted, and grateful. That was true in part at last night's New York Film Critics Circle festivities at Crimson. But when Darren Aronofsky got up to speak about Black Swan's cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, awarded for that film's beautiful visuals, things got ugly.

The director, taking revenge for a negative review, took a swipe at Armond White, chair of the organization whose critique of his film in New York Press he found nasty, and the banter went on from there about the nature of artists and the people who judge their work. As Annette Bening put it gracefully, actors are like fragile gardenias and she and her husband Warren Beatty, also present, protect one another.

Director James Toback, presenting to Charles Ferguson for his deft and not-Wall-Street-friendly documentary, Inside Job, hurled some invective at President Obama for allowing the continuation of economic plunder left over from the Bush years. When it comes to politics, at the podium, everyone's a critic.

Then again, the evening had its share of lovin' too. Best Supporting Actress Melissa Leo spoke about Alice Ward, the Lowell mother of nine she portrays in The Fighter. Ward is hospitalized in Boston and a hundred friends and family stay by her side cheering her on to recovery. Director David O. Russell stood behind her and she playfully asked him not to stare at her tush. Australian actress Jacki Weaver, who plays a Ma Barker type psycho mom in Animal Kingdom, winner for Best First Film, introduced David Michod, the movie's mastermind. Ed Norton presented the award for Best Screenplay to Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg for The Kids Are All Right, noting that their script extends the idea of what is “normal” in families. Presenting the Best Supporting Actor award to Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Willliams lovingly described her friend in the act of wiping kids' vomit. “And it wasn't even his kid,” said the star of this year's Blue Valentine.

In a rare category, the publicist Jeff Hill was also recognized for his contribution to the film industry. Accepting the Best Actor accolade, Colin Firth summed up the evening: “That's what I love about New York. The critics!"

January 11, 2011

Sir Harold Evans, host with biographer Amanda Foreman, at a private luncheon on Monday could not resist mentioning the rare honor of being in a room with not only the dashing if shy “Mr. Darcy,” but the stubborn “Elizabeth Bennett,” memorable roles for Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, the fine actors who now share screen time in The King's Speech. If Mr. Darcy is every girl's crush, as played by Colin Firth, the fantasy increases exponentially. As the stuttering King George, father of the British queen, the actor is tall, handsome, and irresistible. He sweeps through award season, winning Best Actor accolades.

The event was not about heart throbs, but about history. Sir Harold remembered being a small boy glued to the radio in his air raid shelter, as were so many Brits, when Neville Chamberlain announced what the war meant to him, and when King George VI made the famed “king's speech.” Firth emphasized the Aristotelian value of story-telling from the perspective of royalty, how the foibles of characters like Oedipus, Odysseus, and so on are human and moreso. Director Tom Hooper in the interest of research hoped he could have had tea with the queen to ask about her father; he joked at taking over the reign just to feel what that was like. Instead, he announced a valuable find, the diary of speech teacher Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) who brings about the king's epiphany.

So was attention paid to every historic detail and nuance?Not entirely, according to Winston Churchill's granddaughter, Edwina Sandys. She is married to Richard Kaplan, a New York raised architect who said his wife noted, the character playing her granddad was smoking a cigar as he walked through rooms at the palace. Her critique: Churchill would never have done that.

Ah, the day was young for Firth. Off to the next, the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner at Crimson, Colin Firth would receive the Best Actor award presented by Stanley Tucci. Extolling the virtues and extraordinary talent of his friend, the New York actor quipped he finds him “irritating” and hopes he can grow up to be just like him. Gamely, Firth accepted his prize saying, that's why he loves New York, not the food, theater, but the critics.